Under the Microscope

When he hesitated, she said, “This is my career we’re talking about, Max. My life.”

Finally, he nodded. “Okay.”

She held a hand across the small space. “Partners?”

He snorted. “William wouldn’t think much of me replacing him.” But he took her hand. Instead of shaking it, he held it for a long moment while his skin warmed hers. Then he squeezed her fingers, sending a fine hint of warmth across her nerve endings, one that intensified when he said, “You got it.”

But he didn’t say the word, emphasizing what Raine already knew. He would always see her as fragile and in need of protection. Never as his partner.

Never as his equal.

THEY BYPASSED NEW YORK CITY, to avoid both the traffic and the possibility of picking up a tail, on the off chance that the offices of Vasek and Caine were under surveillance. Still, they ran into traffic and it was nearly 10 a.m. before they reached the suburban Philadelphia address Ike had found for James Summerton, the husband of the first reported victim.

When Max had parked in the driveway and shut off the rental car, Raine sat for a moment, gathering her courage.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes. We need to do this. And it helps knowing that if we find a real explanation for what happened, it might give the victims’ families some added peace. Maybe not now, but later.”

But still, sick knots coiled in her stomach as they walked past a boxy sedan and followed the neat brick pathway up to a single-level house. The walls were white vinyl, and the shrubs flanking the side door were wrapped in burlap and coated with a layer of ice and snow. The house looked tucked in for the winter, with only the half- mast flag in the front yard and the strip of black bunting across the kitchen window attesting to the recent tragedy.

When Max moved to the door, she waved him back. “I’ll do it.” She mounted the short flight of stairs and rang the doorbell, hearing it chime inside the house.

There was no response.

She pressed the bell again, then opened the aluminum storm door and knocked on the inner wooden panel. “Mr. Summerton? Anyone home?” Maybe he’d gone to work, she thought, though that seemed odd so soon after his wife’s death.

Then she heard a baby’s fitful cry. The sound brought back that first phone call and the sound of a man’s voice saying, My wife Cari is dead…she took Thriller…we have a baby.

God.

Suddenly panicked, Raine turned and stumbled down the steps. Max caught her upper arm in a firm grip. “Running away?”

“No.” She stopped as the door opened behind her. “Of course not.”

Only she had been about to run, and they both knew it.

“Can I help you?” A man stood on the other side of the door with a cloth slung over his shoulder and a puzzled expression on his face. He was in his late twenties or so, average looking, dark haired and green eyed, wearing decent catalog clothes. He focused on Raine, scanning her from her sensible boots to her jeans and sweater. “Are you from the nanny agency?”

Behind him, the baby’s wails escalated rapidly.

Raine stepped forward and raised her voice to be heard over the cries. “Mr. Summerton, I’m Corraine and this is Max.” She used her full first name in the hopes that he wouldn’t immediately connect her with Rainey Days. “We’re with a group that’s investigating pharmaceutical-related deaths. I hate to bother you right now, but could we have five minutes of your time?”

While she spoke, his face transformed successively from hopeful to shattered, then wary. “Are you reporters?”

“No,” Max said from the bottom step, where he seemed smaller and less imposing than he did on level ground. “We’re with Vasek and Caine Investigations.” He opened his wallet and pulled out a business card. “Can we come in and ask you a few questions?”

Summerton looked ready to refuse, but just then the baby’s cries went silent. He cast a panicked look over his shoulder. “Fine. Shut the door behind you.”

Raine entered the house with Max at her heels, and followed James Summerton through the kitchen and into a small sitting room. She got a sense of a tidy, ordered home overlaid with a layer of clutter. Dirty dishes were stacked in the sink and things looked vaguely out of place, as though they’d been put down and forgotten by a man used to his wife picking up after him.

“There she is!” Summerton made a valiant effort to interject joy into his voice, but Raine could see the toll of grief in the slump of his shoulders when he leaned down and plucked a small, pink-clad child from a folding crib. “There’s my girl!”

The baby-little more than a year old-looked over his shoulder at the strangers and opened her mouth to howl.

Then she stopped. Smiled. Cooed.

And reached for Raine.

“No, baby. She’s here to talk to Daddy.” Summerton shifted his grip on the little girl and gestured Raine and Max over to a pretty chintz-covered couch. “Go ahead. Sit.” He looked around blankly. “Can I get you anything? I have…” He trailed off. “Hell, I don’t know what I have. Cari takes-took care of the entertaining. And the grocery shopping.” He looked around again as though expecting her to be there.

“We’re fine,” Max said quickly. “And we don’t want to take up too much of your time. We’re just looking to get a sense of your wife’s medical history, and maybe some of the events surrounding her passing.”

Raine winced at his forthrightness, but it seemed to work on Summerton. He visibly collected himself and shifted his grip on the baby once again as she squirmed, still heading for Raine.

Thwarted, the little girl burst into loud, miserable tears.

“I’m sorry,” Summerton said, trying to shush the baby and looking close to tears himself. “I’m sorry, she misses Cari. Shush, sweetie, it’s okay. Daddy’s here. I’m sorry.”

“Here. Let me.” Raine transferred the dribble rag from Summerton’s shoulder to her own and plucked the baby from his arms. With motions honed by too many hours of babysitting to count, she perched the child on her shoulder and soothed her with a combination jiggle-bounce and circular back rub.

When the baby quieted, she nodded to a stunned-looking Max. “Go ahead.”

He stared at her for a moment longer before he turned to Summerton. “Okay, here goes. What can you tell me about your wife’s family medical history? Any heart problems, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, that sort of thing?”

Summerton divided his attention between Max and his daughter, who had cuddled right up against Raine’s neck. “Cari’s mother is staying with me. She’ll be back any time now, and could answer that better than I can. But I think she’s got an aunt with late-onset Alzheimer’s, and her great grandfather died of a heart attack in his forties. Beyond that, nothing that I know of.”

“How was Cari’s health in general?”

“Good,” Summerton said quickly. Then he took a breath. “It was good. She was healthy. A little heavier than she’d been before the baby, but she was working on that. She was a little depressed, I think, because I’ve been away so much lately and she’d been here alone with the baby…” He shot a look at his daughter, as though fearing she’d overhear and take it the wrong way. “There just hadn’t been much time for the two of us, you know?”

Max nodded sympathetically. “Anything problematic about the birth?”

Raine paused in her jiggle-bounce, startled by the question, but he was right. What if all four women had recently given birth? It was definitely something to check out. A risk factor, of sorts.

“Well, she had a C-section. Something about her pelvic conformation wasn’t optimal. They said it was the safest way.” When Max nodded encouragingly, Summerton continued, “As long as they had to open her up, Cari got a tummy tuck. She’d been hinting about wanting breast implants recently, but I didn’t want her to get them. She’s- she was perfect already.”

His face nearly crumpled, but he pulled it together, and held it together through the remainder of Max’s